I'll Spin You Valentine Evenings
by LA Knight
Summary: The threads of past and present tangle for a moment - threads of spun glass and brilliant gold and the impossible silken threads of her hair brushing against him.


_**I'll Spin You Valentine Evenings**_

.

.

Everything is different now. The threads of past and present tangle before his eyes and in his mind for a moment - threads of spun glass and brilliant gold and the impossible silken threads of her hair brushing against him as his arm goes around her. But it's wrong, it's different, and for a moment he wants to hate the woman on his arm, the woman who is little more than a stupid girl. He does hate her, because she is not the one with eyes like the eastern sky just before twilight.

_What_ are _you doing?_

_Trying to open these drapes; it's almost spring._

He's here to remind her of the deal. He has to remind himself of that, remind himself that he is not here to spin himself into memories of a past that has shattered like fragile porcelain. He is not here to recapture the feel of that slender hand in his, or the way she felt in his arms when he spun them both across the floor of the hall while silver-strung fiddles played a haunting tune.

To force himself to keep to this path he unspools the dark magic inside him and lets it make him vicious, lets it make him cruel, lets it make him a beast, a monster, a demon. This girl's personal imp of the perverse.

Everything is all wrong now. One girl has turned into another has turned into another.

First the miller's daughter, so young and scared and she reminded him of Bae's mother, of his wife when she was but a slip of a lass. A dark-haired girl with straw in her hair and eyes as black as the magic that had saved her life and trapped her in a golden spider's web of debts and deals and promises as indelible as blood.

An enemy now. She is an enemy and a queen, not a scared girl any longer.

Then the other girl, the maiden, the beauty. He worked at the spinning wheel, transforming coarse dun straw into sparkling gold but it was she who had held the magic, she who had transformed him, she who had turned him from the beast called the Dark One into a prince for a few moments.

Eyes like the blue sky and creamy skin as pale as blushed bone china, lips red as roses though not red as blood like the queen's. Never such a vibrant, violent color. Soft rosepetal lips pressed to his own but he is not here to remember that moment, that second, that brief lightning-flash instant of velvet petal lips against his mouth like a whisper and a promise that this time when he plucks the rose there will be no thorns.

The thorns are his memories and why won't they sleep? Why do they catch at him, tear at him, drink down his blood like thirsty cursed spindles pricking his skin?

_Why do you spin so much?_

_I like to watch the wheel. It helps me to forget._

Because of this third girl, this girl with her curls like softly spun gold and her spoiled ways and her stupidity. She is nothing like his Belle, nothing like the one who cracked the shell of his curse. She is only a stupid drudge in a gaudy crown.

He dances with her on this night of all nights, the night of the ball that celebrates her wedding, to mock her. To remind her. Her glass house, her crystal fortress of lies and omissions, it will come down. Soon it will crack and shatter like a china cup against cold unforgiving stone. She promised him her most prized possession. Soon she'll realize just what a heavy price that is.

_All that is gold does not glitter,_ the Dark One thought suddenly as he carefully spun the girl around and around in a stately waltz. _This all happened because I wanted the wand but it didn't matter, didn't work. Was pointless, really. No magic can bring back the dead. Not even a genie in a lamp could do that_.

He'd felt generous when he'd taken the wand of the golden fairy. Generous because here at last was an artifact that stories said could give him exactly what he wanted. So he'd given the little maid a gift.

_For you; if you'll have it._

_(a rose, a rose that is a man who is a fool, a gift from a beast, a token, a red red rose)_

_Why, thank you._

And perhaps... just perhaps... the tangled hair and dust on her cheeks and grime on her nose had reminded him, had tugged at the threads of his memory until they'd reformed into a tattered tapestry of a girl with dust on her cheeks trying to let in a little spring light. A girl with grime on her nose from being thrown to hands and knees in a tower dungeon. A girl with sometimes-wind-tangled hair like the rose vines creeping soft and lush and alive over the walls of his castle.

_She_ would have liked what he'd done for this third girl - the elegant ballgown, the carriage out of a pumpkin, the lovely white horses. The magnificent glass slippers. Belle would have looked beautiful in glass slippers the rare nights when he'd watched her spin slowly in place in the great hall, humming music as soft as the whirring of the spinning wheel.

He'd been feeling generous... but Rumpelstiltskin was not feeling generous now. Not now, when the golden wand had proven useless. When Regina's offer was looking better and better and better because anything was better, _had_ to be better, than a life in a world where Belle did not exist anymore.

"Remember, Cinderella," the imp whispered in her ear, feeling her shiver at the scrape of his clawed nails and the coolness of his breath.

Belle had shivered, too. But not in fear. Never in fear. Then his claws had been like the gentle pricking of wool across delicate skin, his breath a shushing warmth like rose petals in summer. _She_ had shivered, but shivered _for_ him, once upon a time.

"Your most prized possession. A pittance, really. A deal's a deal, dearie. I'll come to collect soon enough."

Dark magic snatched him from the room, from the frightened girl, from the castle. Left him striding along the road toward his own demesne. He shrugged out of his dragon-hide coat and let the moon caress the champagne silk of his shirtsleeves like a maiden's fingers. Let the night breeze brush phantom lips across his cheek and forehead and jaw. The sky ringing the fullness of the cream-pale moon was the same blue as eyes now long shut.

_She leapt from the tower. She's dead._

_You're lying._

_Am I?_

No, he was not feeling generous this evening. He was not feeling vengeful, either. He hardly felt anything but old and lonely. When he made it back, he would sit at his wheel and watch the moon slide her silvery-white fingers across the wood like a ghost of _her_ as the wheel slowly turned. Gold would spool around the spindle. Glitter darkly as the beaded bronze crinoline of Belle's gown had glittered. He would long to prick his finger on the knife-sharp point and fall into sleep, to let his pathetic longings weave his memories into a dream of her. Dancing, roses, music, candlelight. He would never wake without true love's kiss. The dream would go on and on.

_They were cruel to her._

But no. No, there were still things to do. Still justice to be reaped, vengeance to be wrought. Queen Regina. Sir Maurice the merchant-king. The clerics and their fairy female counterparts. This curse, this spider's web of misery and hatred, it would steal away what they had stolen from him. A happy ending. Not for him, but for her. And for that, they would pay.

Yet for now he would sit and spin and watch the silvery moonlight against the gleaming rosewood wheel, remembering amber firelight dancing over her face in the evening as she spun and spun and spun in a circle and hummed a song that echoed still in his skull.

.

.

.

.

.

.

_So... I don't know where this came from. I was listening to the song "As the World Falls Down" from_ the Labyrinth _and in that song is a line, "I'll paint you mornings of gold; I'll spin you Valentine evenings." And instantly two ideas for one-shots popped into my brain. So here's one. Since all the stories tie into each other in_ Once Upon a Time, _I figured I'd tie "Cinderella" more tightly with "Beauty and the Beast." Hope you enjoyed. Reviews are great! =)_

_This fic is written under the assumption that Regina (in Storybrooke her name is Regina Mills, I seem to recall) is the miller's daughter from the original tale, "Rumpelstiltskin."_


End file.
